From Craigslist to FEI

So we're finishing up our "CSF Fall Schooling Tour of Texas" slowly but surely. This weekend we took Luna and Piper to a local dressage show. This was Luna's first time off property for us and Sarah was once again on her. We had Piper entered in Training classes and Luna in 1st level ones. I took Vana to ride PSG because he's being pouty about not going anywhere. *sigh

We did our usual Starbucks stop but got hung up at McDonalds waiting for them to bake a bagel so that made me way too late to get in for my PSG ride right at 9am. We scratched that ride and focused instead on getting Hannah up for her 9:15a ride. Yay donating money! Vana enjoyed himself well enough hanging out at the trailer though so it wasn't a wash. Old horses, what are you going to do?

Hannah was pretty handsy from the start and Piper tried her best to correct this, but Hannah didn't really comply. In their second test about an hour later, Hannah was too light in the contact and Piper kept stretching to it to no avail. Third test was T1 and Piper was a bit tired of Hannah not being there for her in the contact so it was all a little blimpy but Hannah is learning to keep to her plan and ride the test instead of surviving it. Luckily Piper has plenty of patience (even though she likes to remind you how to hold contact) and they got lots of "beautiful pair" comments. I particularly like the second test's comments where the judge figures out Piper is actually knowledgeable, Hannah is just being weird in the contact. Nice to see that lol!

Bling on Bling

Luna and I had had a rough ride a few days prior to this show where I thought I'd work on her counter canter a touch. She's pretty good at it, but was trying to do flying changes with Sarah. We had warmed up with lots of haunches in, elasticky canter drills, and even some pretty decent baby pirouette work all in the canter before I asked for the basic 1-3 canter loop. Apparently that was a no go in her mind and SO UNREASONABLE. Uh, ok. So we worked through that and ended with excellent walk and trot work, but tense in the canter. I got to a decent stopping point and then Sarah rode her the next day and it was pretty nice.

Show day came and Luna was about as pumped as Luna gets (looking around some happily) and we went to do Hannah's first test. Once she'd finished, I knew Sarah had to be on Luna and as I looked over the warm up field, I saw a nice looking elegant grey in the corner and thought, nice! Oh hey, that's our horse! Nice feeling to think that! Luna was being a little tense so we worked on some throughness and things worked out well. She was trying to pull some "kid" things like yanking the reins out or Sarah's hands or trying to graze but that was the worst of it. They went into the ring and Luna seemed to really enjoy their selves. They had some bobbles with figures and some labored cantering at times, but Luna was happy and responsive while Sarah kept looking for relaxation in them both. Not a bad outing.

Sarah and Luna First Level Test 3

Sarah and Luna First Level Test 2

This was a nice little outing for us. The end was a little exciting though when someone from a Houston barn yelled at a kid and said kid's dad came over to yell at him. A nice bit of drama and yelling for a while and then telling everyone on the show site. Schooling shows, whatcha going to do? *sigh* Do we have a recognized dressage show coming up yet?